


on the outside (looking in)

by lovely_ericas



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 00:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11116125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovely_ericas/pseuds/lovely_ericas
Summary: Gigi isn’t Rory. Dad can’t just make up for being a shitty dad to his first daughter by giving his second everything she wants.





	on the outside (looking in)

**Author's Note:**

> This has been lurking about in my brain for, well, awhile. Sure, the last time we saw her she was a bratty four year old but you've really got to feel for this kid.

Gigi isn’t Rory. Dad can’t just make up for being a shitty dad to his first daughter by giving his second everything she wants.

So what if she’d rather watch _She’s the Man_ than read Shakespeare? Gigi’s not dumb, she knows her favorite movie’s based on _Twelfth Night_. But what’s the point in trying to slog through the weird old timey language just to look pretentious when Rory’ll take her to see Shakespeare in the Park do _Twelfth Night_ in yet another ill-fated attempt at bonding with her anyway?

It’s not like Gigi doesn’t read, but _Ella Enchanted_ and _Harry Potter_ are more her style than Jane Austen and the Brontes.

Dad doesn’t send her to Chilton. Instead he moves them from Boston to New York when she’s ten and sends her to an all girls’ school. Nightingale. Gigi thinks the name’s dumb. What are they all supposed to be doing, taking an example from an old spinster lady from hundreds of years ago and never look at a boy. (Florence Nightingale never got married, right? Totally a lesbian.)

Dad says he doesn’t trust boys (and he’s been the worst of them, so Gigi figures he would know) but hello, clearly Dad doesn’t trust her either. Like she’d really make the kind of mistake that’s ruined her family twice. Yeah right. It’d serve Dad right if she turned out to be a lesbian.

She calls Lorelai her aunt in front of her school friends when recounting her stories.

“She’s like a total vodka aunt but like, actually fun to be around, you know?” Gigi says.

“Totally!” Iris says and Gabriela makes a wistful sound as though wishing she too had a fun aunt like Gigi’s.

She doesn’t tell them that she’s Rory’s mom and that she could have been Gigi’s too, was for four brief months Gigi wishes she could remember better.

The four of them could have been a family, whole, complete.

She harbors no fantasies about Sherry and Dad but this one she clings to for a long time.

Part of this fantasy attachment includes an intense hatred of Rory’s other sister. Luke’s daughter. The one who gets to see Lorelai whenever she wants.

She’s supposed to be at least as smart as Rory (and Gigi suspects she’s smarter, but to even imply that someone is smarter than Rory is probably sacrilege). Unlike Rory, she’s interested in chemistry and neuroscience and all that mathy stuff.

Gigi isn’t interested in any of it.

She has her own bedroom at Lorelai’s for when she sleeps over. Gigi doesn’t have that.

Her parents aren’t together either but she still has way more than Gigi has. She has a mom who wants her and Lorelai and Rory and Luke. Gigi’s never had two parents who want her at the same time, not since she could talk anyway.

Luke’s oh so pleased to have daughters that went to Yale and MIT. Gigi doesn’t really get Luke’s gruff form of affection. It’s nothing like the way her metrosexual father expresses pride.

She already knows wherever she gets in will be a letdown to Dad after Yale. Some irony that the kid he didn’t raise is actually better adjusted than the one he did, huh?

But she can tell, can imagine, how warm and fuzzy it would feel to make Luke proud, to know he’d be boasting about you, boasting when he doesn’t even like talking to other people very much.

Gigi’s never been sure when her dad was proud of her. Oh she gets the usual ‘Bs are very good but I know you can work harder’ spiel that lots of other people get but lots of other people don’t have Rory for a sister.

The weakest part of her perfect family fantasy had always been Rory. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be the youngest, she’d long figured out that the youngest gets the best of it. The problem was Rory, herself. Aside from the fact that Gigi couldn’t imagine Rory doing regular big sister things with her like reading _Seventeen_ together or taking her shopping at Bloomingdale’s – God, she’d probably bring like some Virginia Woolf book and insist on embarrassing Gigi in front of everyone by reading out excerpts as if that’s a normal thing to do in public. All that aside, and it was a lot to set aside, Gigi thought traitorously, there was also the secret Gigi had discovered about Rory.

It shouldn’t have been a secret because it was glaringly obvious to anyone with eyes but. Rory. Is. Bad. With. Kids. Not in like a leave them alone with her and they’ll die kind of a way but she’s so awkward about it. Like she can’t seem to figure out what they want or what to do with them. Gigi doesn’t figure it out for herself until she’s fourteen and she realizes Rory’s just started treating her like a person instead of a human-shaped booby trap.

She can’t tell if Rory knows this about herself or if all that constant praise and adoration have rendered her unable to see herself clearly.

Rory isn’t Mom material. Hell, she’s not big sister material.

Gigi picks Middlebury because a) it’s on the East Coast but b) it’s not too close to Dad and c) it’s far enough away that Gigi won’t have to hear about wonderful Rory Gilmore.

Plus, Rory’s crap at languages and Gigi’s not bad at them.

When she fills out her roommate questionnaire, she hesitates over the nickname and preferred name section before leaving it blank. Georgia's more grown-up, anyway.

Her freshman roommate is called Celeste. She has red hair. Gigi’s never met a redhead before. Well, not one that didn’t eventually turn blond.

They bond over the _Little House_ books, one of the few things Sherry did read to her. Gigi feels like some kind of an imposter, bonding over books like she’s Rory.

Celeste’s a Studio Art major. She wants to be, like, an actual artist and she’s fully prepared to earn nothing.

Celeste’s a middle child but she doesn’t get it. Gigi tries to explain.

“Georgia, I just don’t understand why you don’t put all that energy into figuring out who you are rather than moping over not being Rory.” Celeste says.

It’s just that it’s not fair that Rory gets so much when Gigi gets so little. She’d trade her dad’s money for it in an instant if she could have Rory’s life.

Even her grandparents are better than Gigi’s are. The Tinsdales are dead and so is Straub. Francine is alright, Gigi will allow, but she’s not on the level of Richard and Emily. Sure, it’s Straub’s money that’s paying for her to go to Middlebury but only because that money is Dad’s now. Dad paid for Nightingale all by himself.

Francine doesn’t like children either, which is maybe where Rory got it from, and she regards Gigi as the Exception, clearly tolerated for her dad’s sake.

Rory's wedding invitations come in the mall when Gigi's a sophomore. Gigi skims over the card. _Richard and Emily Gilmore request the pleasure of your company at the wedding of their granddaughter Lorelai Leigh Gilmore to Logan Asher Huntzberger_... Of course Rory's marrying the perfect boy, of course Rory will have the perfect wedding.

Will they even throw a wedding for her when Gigi gets married? To a girl?

Gigi will never be able to decide whether she hates Rory or wants to be her.


End file.
